Alphabet stock adds over 9% today hitting fresh all-time high after the company reported earnings and revenue above the Wall Street estimates. Today’s rally drove the capitalization up to 1.3 trillion. Google is 19.52% higher since the beginning of the year.
Alphabet reported earnings of $22.30 per share beating analysts expectations of $15.57. EPS grew by 45.3% YOY well above the expectations. Google’s advertising business is recovering after the big slowdown in the second quarter of 2020.
Google reported revenue at $46.43 billion, above the consensus of $44.14 billion.
The Google Cloud segment revenue came up to $3.83 billion beating the expectations of $3.80 billion. Google Cloud includes Google’s infrastructure and analytics platforms, collaboration tools, and other services for enterprise customers. Google Cloud generates revenues primarily from fees received for Google Cloud Platform services and Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite) collaboration tools.
YouTube ads revenue reported at $6.9 billion above the Wall Street analysts’ expectations of $6.22 billion.
Traffic acquisition costs (TAC) came up to $10.47 billion, well above the expectations of $9.32 billion.
Alphabet operating expenses were $15.2 billion, down 4%. The YOY decline reflects the lapping of valuation-based compensation charges in certain Other Bets segment in the Q4 of 2019, primarily in R&D, as well as the impact of actions taken earlier in the year as a result of COVID.
After the stellar earnings report, almost all analysts in Wall Street increased the Alphabet price target.
